Full Text for Dogmatics 2- Volume 75 - Why do we need a Savior who is God and man? (Video)

ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 75 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Why do we need a Savior who is God and man? >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Well, Josh, if I may ask you -- I'm just curious -- what did you learn in Confirmation about that? >> I learned in Confirmation that he had to be man so he could die. And he had to be God so his death would be a sufficient sacrifice to cover the sins of the world. Is that correct, Dr. Maxwell? >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Well, that's what I learned in Confirmation, too. And I want to -- I don't want to say that it's wrong. But I think that there's one aspect of that phrasing that I would like to question. And that's the had to. I don't know that it's helpful to talk about necessity like it had to work this way. That God couldn't have done it any other way. Because God can do whatever he wants. So the question for us is not to figure out what God had to do. But the question is: What did he do? What is his actual plan of salvation? And with that qualification, I think your answer is very good in recognizing the fact that our salvation includes attributes from both natures of Christ. It includes the human attribute of being mortal, being able to die. But it also includes the attribute of God that -- of being infinite. And so the death of that, that death would be infinite. And that would be an illustration of the ***genus idio modicum, which Dr. Scaer referred to, which says that attributes of both natures are communicated to the person. So that anything which Jesus does is going to include both -- attributes from both natures. So your point about both natures being involved in the atonement and -- is an example of the genus idio modicum. Or if you want to focus on the fact that it is an act that he does, not just this person, then that would be the ***genus apostelis modicum. Because that says that in every act that he does, both natures are involved. So the difference between those two is just whether or not you're talking about the person or whether you're considering the person as acting. In the first case, it's genus idio modicum. In the second case, it's genus apostelis modicum. But I think there's more we can say about that. And I'm thinking in particular about a passage from Luther that is I think quoted in the Formula of Concord, in fact, where Luther discusses what Christ accomplished on the cross in terms of scales. And here is what he says: That our sins -- it's like our sins are in one pan of a scale. And these sins are so incredibly heavy that they would crush us. But when you put God and especially when you put God dead in the other pan of the scale, then our sins fly up -- the other pan flies up as if it's light and empty. So that when you put God's death over against our sins, that's going to be decisive. And it's going to be overwhelming. And the sins are nothing compared to the death of God. And there again, we're talking about the genus idio modicum. How can we say that God died? It's because God made his own attributes of our human nature as well as that nature itself, including the ability to die. And so we correctly speak about God's death when we discuss the cross. Now, there's another application I think we can make between Christology and justification and atonement. In that another way that we can notice that it's important that Jesus is God and man has to do with the Lord's Supper. That what we want to say in the Lord's Supper is that the flesh of Christ is life giving. We want to say that the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sins. It's not just we want to say this. But this is what scriptures say. John 6 tells us that Christ's flesh gives life. And I John tells us that the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin. Now, if you think about those statements, those attributes of being able to give life and being able to forgive sins, these are attributes of God. Only God can create life and only God can forgive sins. I mean, if you remember the story of Jesus healing the paralytic whom they lowered through the roof in Mark Chapter 2, Jesus tells the paralytic that his sins are forgiven. And the crowd responds correctly, that Jesus is blaspheming. Or at least it would be correct if he wasn't God. Because they understood that when Jesus claimed to forgive sins, he was claiming to be God. Only God could forgive sins. But here I John tells us that the blood of Jesus purifies us from sins. So what we have in the Lord's Supper is that Christ's flesh and blood, his human nature, these parts of his human nature actually have divine power to give life and to forgive sins. And Lutherans called that the ***genus mia stoticum. When attributes of his divinity are communicated to his human nature. And what's at stake in the genus mia stoticum is precisely this point. The fact that Jesus is God and man means that his human body and blood can give life and forgive sins. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***